


cage in your heart

by fated_addiction



Category: Bleach
Genre: Angst, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-21
Updated: 2012-08-21
Packaged: 2017-11-12 14:06:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/491949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fated_addiction/pseuds/fated_addiction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five insignificant moments. Five insignificant starts. Take care and keep them close.</p>
            </blockquote>





	cage in your heart

**Author's Note:**

> Blah, blah trying new styles and things out but really, what this boils down to is simple: [swingsdown](http://swingsdown.tumblr.com/) makes a lot of ridiculously pretty things. Or blogs about them. And I like to watch.

1\. The books on his desk sit at an angle. Shakespeare. Kerouac. Ishiguro. Her nails click against their covers. Ichigo never fixes them. “ _Fuck_ , I dunno,” he says, and she streams her gaze to the side, eyes to the window, ready to not pay attention (but really pay attention to all _things_ that swallow him) because that’s what she’s here for, not paying attention to all the things that fix Ichigo into being _him_. “It’s like,” he finishes, leaning into his desk chair; the wheels shriek a little as he finishes, “putting together all the pieces of things I don’t want to be – ” it’s how he flushes and mutters and sighs right into her smile at the window.

 

2\. In the weeks that come with her recovery –

the shuddering, shakes, clutching at the blankets, all the words carved into her bones, even gathering dust and might and the fire has sunk under her nose as Renji hovers by this door, standing away from her brother, muttering and sighing it was _never_ this bad in Inzuri 

but there is a distinct different between acknowledging death and _accepting_ death and having both taken away from her in the span of just a simple story, fingertips singed

and it’s Aizen, glittering, sly and lazy, saying to her, hand at her throat: “you were part of this all along –”

there are letters, wrapped in small parcels and Renji’s fists.

The curls of his _p_ s and _t_ are sharp, too sharp, as if he were yelling at her to just fucking get better and back here already, my fucking closet misses you and smells like you too – did you really have to leave this with you … oh no wait, Karin found her pajama bottoms again and she did this stupid thing where her nose scrunches up and Pops is just so fucking _stupid_ about everything, pointing something about a mysterious – shut the fuck up, and don’t worry I’m keeping your candle on my desk –

She can’t call them love letters, anyway.

 

3\. There is goodbye and then there is goodbye. They sit in the backyard, too close to the fence, and watch the light in the twin’s room blink. A day after, he will fight one more time. A day after that day, they’ll pretend too hard and her palms will sweat into her gloves, her knees feel clumsy into skates, and he is going to hold her close enough to almost be a teenager. She can taste the regret. This isn’t it about senses: Ichigo’s legs stretch underneath her legs and she feels his knees under her dress, Yuzu’s dress, straight into tights that itch and scratch and lick away at her skin – it’s the most she’ll admit to, the touching, because memorizing the length of him, the necessary length of him scares her more than it needs to, but then there are the facts again; the scarf and coat hang in the closet.

 

4\. He wipes the blood from her mouth. His nail juts into her skin. Then it follows: the column of her throat, the pinch of fabric that gathers over her binding, her gloves and then inside of her palm (and she swears, _swears_ Shirayuki goes and warms into some kind of moan) for the reassurance. There is no time. There is never enough time and time, in its favor, seems to speed and spin, dance over her head and his head and his family (her _responsibilities_ ) are waiting for him to come back to them 

– there is a place for everything and everything in its place as Ichigo draws himself into height, his mouth scraping into her forehead when she closes her eyes and he pinches the ends of her hair.

“You’re fucking slow sometimes,” he says, and she punches him in the gut – it’s a laugh.

 

5\. Her fingers pull gravel from a gash. It mouths the side of her head; her hair peels into that and dust and a bit of grass from the off-shot of a training yard. Byakuya remains dead. It’s still easy to fist the hilt of her zanpakutō. Her knuckles are broken and when she squeezes her eyes, she sees him, right there, then, up at the wall, sharpen into an edge, back bared and just waiting to watch. The fabric of his uniform is torn. Gravity and gravel tattoo the break of his skin. Her imagination factors out, this time around too. She doesn’t go to him then. She could. Maybe someone even expects her to - _still_. It’s always about coloring in the romance. But she won’t.

Know this: it’s not about time or space, or the length what a stop really costs them because she doesn’t remember what it was like before him, without the presence of _him_ even though he existed and she existed and that was what it was written into; she can stand like this, and she will stand like this (a _Kuchiki_ never cracks, not even into blinking) because

Well. Just because.


End file.
